DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Abstract): The proposed research will continue for three more years a current three-wave panel study of the post-communist transformation's effect on the well-being of families and individuals in the Czech Republic (HM50369). Three waves of questionnaire data have been collected in 1994-1996. The panel is a representative quota sample of Czech households, one-half rural and one-half urban, and our annual retention rate is about 91% (740 households in 1994; 703 in 1995 and 671 in 1996), meaning we expect to retain about 604 panel members through the proposed fourth wave in 1998. The project's aims are to refine the connection between the transformation and stress, model the stress-distress process, ad compare the results with those in the United states. The current project has resulted in 23 published articles and 27 papers at professional meetings since funding. This continuation will enable the researchers to interview 16 cases from the existing panel for intensive study in 1997-1998, collect a fourth wave of questionnaire data in the winter of 1999, and finish analysis of all four waves in 1999-00. With the 16 cases studies the researchers will write a book in 1997-99 about at least ten Czech people and their families undergoing the post-communist transformation and use insights from the case studies to inform both the fourth wave of data collection in 1999 and the quantitative analysis of all four waves of data in 1999-00.